by John Lutz
“Your home on Devlon, you mean? What was wrong with it?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Well, that was the problem. Karen was a devoted homemaker. She spent four years working on that house, and finally she had it perfect. I believe she was bored.”
“Uh-huh. Were there problems between the two of you?”
“Well—obviously there were. But I wasn’t aware of them. I still don’t understand.”
“When Karen left, what reasons did she give?”
“She didn’t give any. She came into my bedroom in the morning and said she was going to Chicago and it would be useless if I tried to find her.”
“You each had your own bedroom,” Nudger said. He tried to remember the polite phrase. “Then you weren’t having conjugal relations?”
Dupont looked at him, and he looked at his reflection in Dupont’s glasses. If the man was annoyed at the slipup he’d made, he didn’t show it.
“Of course we were. I snore, that’s all.”
“Were you still in bed when she told you she was leaving?”
“In bed and only half awake. Karen had acted impulsively before, so I didn’t think it was beyond her to open my bedroom door, poke her head in, and tell me good-bye. It wouldn’t have surprised me to get up an hour later and find her in the kitchen eating breakfast.”
“Then what?” Nudger asked. “Did you get out of bed and try to stop her?”
“No, I was sure that would be useless, if she really did plan on walking out of the house that morning. She gave me one of her dispassionate looks, then gently closed the door. I didn’t hear her leave, but half an hour later, when I got up, she was gone.”
“How did she leave?”
“I told you, I never saw her go.”
“I mean, did she have her own car? Was it still in the garage?”
“Yes and yes,” Dupont said. “I noticed it around ten o’clock, when I was leaving for my regular round of golf. I assumed she’d called a cab, but the police say they checked all the cab companies and they found no record of a fare being picked up at my address.”
“Any ideas?”
“Perhaps a friend picked her up.”
Nudger thought about that. It was possible. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find that friend. “Mr. Dupont, is there any reason to believe your wife might have been involved with another man?”
Dupont didn’t seem to resent the question. “None at all,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible,” Effie said.
“Maybe you know something that makes it seem even more possible,” Nudger said.
She opened her mouth as if to laugh, then said in a sober voice, “Karen and I didn’t have that much to do with each other. I know nothing about her social life.”
“Hear any gossip about her?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t repeat it. Gossip isn’t of much use in court.”
“We’re not in court. If you heard something about Karen, I should investigate it.” He stared directly at Dupont as he spoke.
Dupont was in a quandary. If he didn’t kill his wife, he shouldn’t mind Nudger probing around for more facts. To demand that Fleck take Nudger off the case would seem too much like the action of a guilty man. Nudger figured that guilty or innocent, Dupont wouldn’t pressure Fleck to fire him. And leaving Nudger in place would seem an acceptable risk for a guilty Dupont; after all, the police had come up with enough evidence to send the prosecuting attorney into paroxysms of joy. How much more harm could Nudger do?
“There are people,” Nudger said, “who mistakenly assume a murder conviction is impossible without the body of the victim.”
“Oh, I was never one of them, Mr. Nudger. In fact, I had a year of law school before deciding on a banking career. I’ve long been aware that corpus delicti refers to the body of the crime and not of the victim. The prosecution need only establish that the crime has been committed. A corpse isn’t necessary for that. Which is what makes this entire farce possible. I’m sure Karen is somewhere in Chicago, staying with a friend or simply existing on her own, perhaps even under a different name.”
“Would she come forward if she knew you were being tried for her murder?”
“I would hope so,” Dupont said.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Effie said. “Karen’s heart can be stone once she’s turned on a person.”
“How would you know that?” Nudger asked.
“Once she decided I resented her marriage to Roger, she turned on me. I doubt if she’d come forward to save me from being found guilty of murder.”
“What about if you were going to be executed?” Nudger asked.
Effie stared at the pool water glittering in the sun and seemed to consider the question. “I’d like to think she’d come forward to save me, or to save anyone, out of common decency. But I’m not sure she would.”
“Of course she would,” Dupont said.
“Is that what you’re counting on?” Nudger asked.
“If it came to that,” Dupont said, “I think enough publicity, perhaps a call for her help, running in the Chicago papers, would probably bring my plight to her attention and she’d emerge and make it clear that she was still alive. But I’m certain it won’t come to that. Any fair-minded jury will acquit me. And Effie and I have told you how impulsive Karen is; it’s possible she might have a change of heart and appear back at home today. A whim, and then another whim . . . that’s Karen.” He seemed unconcerned that the wrong whim might result in his death.
Nudger thanked Effie Prang for the lemonade, then told Dupont he hoped he was right about the jury. He said good-bye. Nobody told him there was a pair of trunks in the house that would fit him and urged him to stay. He placed his empty glass on the table, bumping his head on the big yellow umbrella, then walked toward the gate.
Thinking Roger Dupont would have benefited from another year or so of law school. Wondering what, if anything, was Dupont’s game. Understanding now why Fleck had hired an investigator.
Fleck’s erratic but devious mind kept telling him it was possible he was being had, but couldn’t figure out how.
Nudger’s stomach was telling him the same thing.
Chapter Seven
I can’t hear you, Nudger!” Fleck bellowed.
“Sorry, can’t help it,” Nudger replied, raising his voice. “I’m calling from my car.”
“Don’t you know enough to roll up your window before you use your car phone? Do I have to tell you everything?”
Nudger couldn’t roll up his window, because the phone chord had to come through it. He was calling from one of those roadside pay phones that allowed you to make a call without getting out of your car, provided you parked just right and had really long arms. If Fleck wanted to assume that he had a car phone, so be it.
“I’ve talked to Roger Dupont.”
There was a pause. Nudger could imagine Fleck glancing around to make sure no one was in earshot as he hunched over the phone. “What did you make of him?”
“He’s still placing a lot of faith in the legal system—”
“Innocent! Fool!”
Before Fleck could get started on how lucky Dupont was to have Fleck as his attorney, Nudger put in, “He also seems to be hoping that his wife will turn up. That she’ll hear about his problems and come forward, or something.”
Nudger paused, but Fleck made no comment, so he went on. “I was thinking—”
“Yeah?” Fleck barked. “What were you thinking, Nudger?”
Sensing that he was being drawn into another of the legal genius’s traps, Nudger pressed on regardless. “I was wondering if we ought to take steps to contact Mrs. Dupont.”
“Like what?”
“Advertise in the Chicago papers. Even on television. Or I could go up there myself—”
This was what Fleck had been waiting for. He pounced. “Terrific! Wonderful! You get a little vacation and I get the bill. Why should I p
ay your way to Chicago? ’Cause you’re not getting anything done here?”
“Listen, Fleck—”
“No, you listen, fella. You’re the one who’s been hearing but not listening. Now, what am I paying you for?”
“To find out the truth.”
“Exactly. Now why won’t you do what I’m paying you to do?”
“But if I could find Mrs. Dupont—”
“And how are you going to go about that, Nudger? Go to the top of the Sears Building with a pair of binoculars and look around? Ride the El round and round the Loop and hope she gets on?”
Nudger sighed and looked out the window at the traffic streaming past on Clayton Road. It consisted mostly of the Mercedeses and Volvos of homebound Ladue-ites. Rush hour. Everybody was tired and in a hurry to get home. Including Nudger.
He tried again. “If we find Mrs. Dupont, that’s the end of the case.”
Fleck exploded. “Think I don’t know that? Haven’t thought of the possibility? Haven’t got it covered? Think I need you to tell me about it?”
Nudger decided not to answer any of these questions. The sun was beating down on him through the windshield. The phone felt slippery in his sweaty grasp. He was getting dizzy from the exhaust fumes of passing traffic. By now, he hoped, he had fallen into all of Fleck’s traps. Maybe then they could move on to the part of the conversation where they exchanged information.
He asked, “Do you already have someone looking for Mrs. Dupont?”
“You bet.”
“You’ve hired a Chicago investigator—”
“Wrong! Think I’m a fool, Nudger? That I’d pay my own investigator when someone else is doing it for free?”
“Doing it for free?”
“Somebody I know will find Mrs. Dupont, if she’s there to be found. Somebody with the best motive in the world for finding her. You with me, Nudger? You know what the best motive in the world is?”
“Money,” Nudger said. He’d sworn he wouldn’t be drawn into one of these Q&A sessions with Fleck, but he was tiring fast.
“Right! Brilliant! And do you know—”
Nudger cut him off. He’d remembered now what Hammersmith had told him that morning. One of the damning pieces of evidence against Dupont was that he had taken out a big policy on Karen’s life. “There’s an insurance investigator looking for her, right?”
Disappointed, Fleck fell silent. Nudger reached in his shirt pocket for his notebook. The cover and the first few pages were soaked through with sweat. He flipped to a dry page and took out his pen. “Who is this investigator?
“Walter Blaumveldt, at General Mutual downtown. But I don’t see why you have to bother talking to him. Don’t see why you have to worry about Karen Dupont at all. You know what cheap suspicious bastards these insurance companies are. Or maybe you don’t know, poor sad innocent that you are. I could tell you stories of people who suffered the most terrible injuries, who had the most one-hundred-percent valid claims, and they wouldn’t have gotten a dime out of these insurance companies. Not a dime! If it hadn’t been for Lawrence—”
“You’re fading, Lawrence,” Nudger said. “I must be leaving the cell.”
“What?”
“Or maybe it’s a dead spot.” Nudger began to move the phone away from his mouth. “These darn car phones. You never—”
He hung up the phone. Thought, Whew!
“So,” Claudia Bettencourt said, “you think that one way or another, the wife is going to turn up?”
Nudger shook his head. “No. I think he killed her.”
She’d listened to him quietly while he told her about Roger Dupont. They were seated at opposite ends of the sofa in the living room of her South St. Louis apartment on Wilmington. Two glasses of the cheap red wine Nudger had brought sat untouched before them on the coffee table.
“It sounds as if Dupont’s lawyer shares your opinion,” Claudia said. She was a lean, dark-haired woman with a slender face, dark brown eyes, and a straight nose that was too long and somehow lent her a noble appearance. Not at all a flashy woman, but the longer men looked at her the more attractive she became. It had happened with Nudger, and he’d seen it happen with other men. Claudia’s understated sensuousness hinted at heat below the surface.
Now Nudger did lean forward and take a sip of his wine. He knew nothing about wine, but he liked this brand. It had a cap that was easier to take off than a cork, and it had a nice bite to it. “Anyone looking at the evidence would have to conclude Dupont’s guilty. A jury is almost sure to see it that way.”
“He wouldn’t be the first person to put too much faith in the justice system,” Claudia said.
Nudger glanced out the window. They were on the second floor and the view was of sun-dappled sycamore leaves. It still looked hot outside, but the huge, noisy air conditioner mounted in the dining room window was keeping summer at bay. From the kitchen wafted the scent of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. It smelled great but contained garlic. Nudger had plans for himself and Claudia; he regarded the garlic as a discouraging sign.
“I remember about a year ago when you decided to plead innocent to a traffic ticket,” Claudia said.
His stomach kicked with irritation. Why did she have to bring that up? “I wasn’t speeding,” he told her. “The cop’s radar gun was defective. I know, because the Granada won’t go as fast as that gun had it registered.”
Claudia looked at her wine but didn’t touch it. She’d once mentioned she liked to give wine time to breathe. “You’re saying you were innocent.”
“Of course,” Nudger said. “Because I was innocent.”
He still sounded defensive.
“But you had to pay the fine. I remember how astounded you were. You’d put faith in your innocence, but you paid.”
She was right about that. But Nudger had been more naive a year ago. Because he was innocent he’d assumed the judge would somehow be able to see into his mind, to know the police were mistaken in this instance. Why, the judge only had to turn in his chair and look out the window at the old Granada parked nearby to know it wouldn’t go as fast as the speeding ticket said it had been going.
But the judge hadn’t turned and looked outside. He’d listened to the officer who’d written the ticket, listened to Nudger, and told Nudger to pay. Nudger had started to protest, but the court clerk was already calling the name of the next defendant, who turned out to be a woman who’d been ticketed for speeding on the same street and on the same date as Nudger, and who stood behind him in line to pay her fine.
“Maybe Dupont really is innocent and has the same bright faith that blinded you a year ago,” Claudia suggested.
“You’re overlooking the evidence against him.”
“It was your word against a traffic cop with a radar gun,” Claudia said, “and you thought you’d walk.”
“I did walk,” Nudger reminded her, “after paying my fine. But Dupont is taking more of a chance. He might have to walk to a little room where the state will kill him.”
Claudia picked up her wineglass, rotated it by its stem, then sipped. Grimaced. “Maybe he has more faith than you had,” she said. “Maybe the evidence isn’t as damaging as it seems. You know how a house of cards can come down all at once.”
“This is a house of cast concrete,” Nudger said.
She stood up and smoothed her jeans down over her thighs. She was one of those thin women who appear much taller than they are. “The spaghetti ought to be about done.” She walked into the kitchen. He loved to watch her walk, the subtle undulation that fired his desire.
It bothered him that she felt Dupont might be innocent. He knew her and knew she was reasonably sure of it. Claudia and Effie were the only ones who shared that feeling. Not even Dupont’s lawyer shared it.
“Are you going somewhere after dinner?” Claudia called from the kitchen.
Nudger raised his voice so she could hear him over the air conditioner. “That depends. Danny’s cousin Ray’s got some ki
nd of problem with a woman who works at Shag’s. I might drive by to talk to him. Or I might not.”
“What’s it depend on?” Claudia asked.
Playing coy, she was. Nudger smiled. “Oh, this and that.” Keeping her on a string.
You want a salad with your spaghetti?”
“Sure,” Nudger said. “What kind of dressing?”
“Dressing’s already on it. Blue cheese with garlic.”
“Oh.”
“Garlic bread?” she asked.
“Why not?” Nudger said despondently.
“Come in here so you can help me,” she said. “Bring your glass.”
Nudger went.
Chapter Eight
Nudger had phoned from Claudia’s, so Ray should have been expecting him. He knocked on Ray’s apartment door a little after nine. It was still brutally hot, and only a few of the tenants of St. James apartments were out on the grounds. No one was at the pool, which Nudger could barely see from where he stood, because it was drained and under repair. The only sounds were the steady, shrill ratcheting of crickets and the faint voice of a baseball announcer from inside Ray’s apartment.
It took Ray a while, but finally he opened the door. He looked as if he’d just awakened, only that couldn’t be, because he was holding an opened can of beer.
Since Nudger had last seen him, Ray seemed to have lost a lot of weight except for around his midsection, giving him the look of one of those pear-shaped inflatable punching bags for kids that always spring back upright after being knocked down. But portly though his midsection had become, his face was almost gaunt and wore its perpetual expression of equal mixtures of self-pity and indignation. His yellowed, protruding teeth looked as if they’d moved and were even more crooked. Behind him Nudger could see a Cubs game on TV. There was nothing about Ray that Nudger liked.
“Hey, Nudge!” Ray said with overfamiliarity and feigned brightness. “C’mon in and sit yourself down.”
Nudger did. The apartment was maybe two degrees cooler than outside. Before moving the sports page of a crinkled newspaper to make room and sitting down on the sofa, he saw into the bedroom. Ray’s bed had been stripped of its sheet; suggesting that it was his biannual wash day.